~ politics and pumpkins

Category Archives: Here’s hoping

I’m not usually so bossy. I generally go with the philosophy of stating my opinion and letting people decide for themselves.

This is going to be different. Here’s what to do.

Decide what you believe in. Do you believe in the people’s right to clean water? Do you believe that we should make good on the deals we make? Do you believe no one should be forced from their home because someone else wants to make money off of the land it’s built on? If you said yes, that’s great. Move on to step 2.

Make a list of all of your bank accounts. If ANY of them are not a local credit union, local savings bank or community bank, go to step 3.

Find a local credit union or savings bank. Open an account. Go to step 4.

Get ready to transfer all of your assets to your new local bank account.

Why do this? National banks are so convenient and secure. Credit unions are secure too, and in all of my experiences with small local banks I have had all of the conveniences of big banks with fewer fees. A lot of small banks and credit unions have networks so you can use ATMs without penalties. With direct and mobile deposit, most banking is accessible remotely. The convenience of going to a branch when you’re on vacation is really a non-issue these days.

But really, why do this? Because big banks are using YOUR MONEY to fund projects that you as a person would never agree with. Community banks and credit unions put that money back into your community.

Ok, so why now? I believe in the power of organizing. Right now, some of the biggest of the big banks are funding the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The DAPL is unethically driving through sovereign lands that were granted to the Sioux in 1868 through the Treaty of Fort Laramie. As a united people we can send a big message that our money is not to be used to destroy the environment and attack indigenous peoples, American citizens, or any individual.

Let’s take back our world from the 1%. We have always had the power. Let’s use it.

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I shouldn’t be surprised. I know. I’m a hoper though, a dreamer, a believer. So when our mainstream news fails to report some of the biggest stories about our civil liberties, I get disappointed. And, as the holder of a Journalism degree I get downright pissed.

It started with the NPR report this morning about the Mexican immigrant shot dead in Washington state. This morning. Not when it happened. But that’s small time.

What about the news out of Chicago that police are holding US citizens illegally in a warehouse and using torture techniques, that at least once has led to death. No booking, no phone call.

They’re probably terrorists, so it’s okay. It’s okay not to mention them in The New York Times or The Washington Post. At all.

Terrorists like a woman “who says she was shackled to a bench within Chicago’s secretive interrogation facility for 18 hours before being permitted access to a lawyer described the ordeal as being “held hostage’’ in the police compound that has been likened to a CIA black site,” according to an article in The Guardian.

The article also quoted another detainee as saying, “You are just kind of held hostage.” “The inability to see a lawyer is a drastic departure from what we consider our constitutional rights. Not being able to have that phone call, the lack of booking, makes it so that when you’re there, you understand that no one knows where you are.”

The role of the press as a government watchdog is staggeringly absent here. A Chicago Sun-Times article reports a police department denial, using the fact that “unlike other Chicago Police facilities over the years, no allegations of torture have been reported in the media in connection with Homan Square.”

Let’s say there’s no torture. Is that what we’ve come to? If there’s no waterboarding going on it’s okay to deny citizens their constitutional rights? It’s not torture, it’s just eroding civil liberties. No big deal.

So other than my personal, and pretty inconsequential drama, a lot’s happened out there in the big old world over the past year.

This post is intended to be lighthearted, but make no mistake that the issues are not that way in my brain, heart or opinion.

Since moving off the farm in November I’ve enjoyed my first “commute” in over a decade. I listen to NPR, the droll repetitive news source that jokes about its appeal to white people. I love it. The news, but mostly the special guests and other programs that are funny, poignant, current, whatever.

This morning in a lighthearted bit on NPR’s Morning Edition, listeners got movie and TV recommendations from Mara Brock Akil and Salim Akil, the black power couple that combined are responsible for TV drama like The Game and Being Mary Jane and comedy film Jumping the Broom.

In a year that has brought such pain to communities of color and empathetic allies, their conversation was a subtle reminder that even though fewer people are hashtagging I can’t breathe these days, these issues are not going away.

Just this week three Muslims were shot dead in North Carolina. So was an unarmed Mexican immigrant crossing the street in Pasco, Washington. No one seems to care. Or else we just don’t know what we can do. Don’t believe we can change anything.

These cases come and go with little consequence. Maybe someone gets locked up, but the trend continues. The poor, the crazy, the tinted. It’s like there’s a resolution that’s been made. Someone noticed that we’re not doing anything.

Salim Akil mentions the conversation recounted by so many black parents. The conversation where the parent tells them not to run around in this affluent neighborhood. Someone may mistake this boy’s playing as running away in this affluent neighborhood. In his affluent neighborhood.

It’s a brief bit in an otherwise upbeat piece recommending things to watch. (See or listen to the the interview here). And I promised this was going to be lighthearted, so I’ll skip to the finale. Salim Akil talks about movies that are about being an American, yes an African-American, but in the end the movies are about growing up, living and being an American. Then he shares his hope that white people will watch these movies and say, “You know, I like these black people!”

I’m paraphrasing because I can’t remember the exact words, but that was the feeling. The host laughs, the guests laugh, but I don’t think it was as much of a joke as it was the truth. My momma always used to say that half of what’s said in jest is true. I’d say most is more like it.

The truth is, I do love black people. As a stereotype, this community is bold and truthful. They are community-based and richly steeped in their surroundings. They are expressive and honest, and no nonsense. As long as our society deals in stereotypes I may as well get these ones out. I wish I had half the character, class and grace required to live day to day as a person of color. I stand with you, and I’m not forgetting.

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As the Agrarian Trust project I’ve been working on forges forward, it seems important to check back and define what this trust idea is really about. I remember my first reflections on mishearing our name as a growing trust, and all the connotations that came along with my understanding of what a trust is.

In current language, as applied to land, a trust is “a property interest held by one person (the trustee) at the request of another (the settlor) for the benefit of a third party (the beneficiary).”

The classification applied to a trust is based primarily upon its mode of creation, in which it may be created either by act of a party or by operation of the law.

Many of the cases we have been unearthing through our land access stories are created “by the act of a party”, generally between land owner, land trusts and farmers. In these cases, trusts are divided into two types: express or implied.

The basic difference between one created by express act of a party and one created by implied act of a party is that the express acts are stated fully in language (oral or written), while implied acts are inferred solely from the conduct of the parties.

In the general legal, political and historical context of land access it is evident that going forward, trusts that are stated fully in written language will have the most staying power, although even they must be reinforced by our constant attention.

Let’s go back for a minute. Way back. The 18th century or so. Often when we look back at the founding fathers one of at least two things happen.

One. We are sidetracked by the negative. The loss of Native American life and sovereignty. Slavery. The lack of rights for women. The economic advantage enjoyed by those who set flame to the American Revolution.

Two. We miss the point all together. We see the American Revolution as over and successful. We thank our forefathers for their work and praise the liberty that they have given us. We compare ourselves to oppressed states and give thanks for the freedoms left to us.

Both of these do a disservice to the positive aspects of what our nation “and any nation so conceived” was built on.

Jefferson’s ideal Agrarian Democracy offered individuals the independence of farming their own land. This ideal has been largely replaced, as he himself anticipated, by individual debt and employment roughly equivalent to the factory work of his time. These and other modern factors often remove the economic autonomy necessary for a citizen to have true freedom and liberty.

Thomas Jefferson warned, even as the American Revolution raged on:

The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless . . .From the conclusion of this war we shall be going downhill. It will not then be necessary to resort . . . to the people for support. They will be forgotten . . . their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves . . . in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights . . . The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.”

I don’t know if even Jefferson could have anticipated the types of power that exist in our society today. Land, which once seemed so plentiful a resource is now a financial asset. Farmland is being purchased by corporate and private entities with no interest in working the land or being responsible stewards for responsible farmers.

This is where the trust comes in. Every one of us has an interest in securing the land that will produce food for our generations and our future. The more I talk to people about land and land access for farmers, the more hopeful I become. There are so many people who care about securing land for farmers, and many of them are already working on innovative solutions.

Making a point of putting community, agricultural and human value above financial value is crucial in our time when so much land is at stake. Taking the time to entrust farmland, with specific written language, in perpetuity for sustainable agricultural use is a simple, individual act that will leave an invaluable legacy.

In some ways, it’s almost the opposite of our understanding of the word “trust”, which we know to mean confidence in, or reliance on the integrity, justice, etc. of a person (or society). By writing down what we mean to happen to our land almost says that we don’t trust that our society will protect our farmland.

It is more like William Penn spoke about the charter of my home state of Pennsylvania: “I want to put it out of my power, or that of my successors, to do mischief.”

It reaffirms that great vision that founded our great nation, and contradicts the Jeffersonian prediction that we “will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for our rights.”

Instead, it will write our destiny to be the former of his dichotomous prediction that “our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.”

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Memories return like dreams, if they return at all. Something reminds. A flash flood, and you are elsewhere, in another time.

It’s hard to find your way back.

Last night. House show in Philly. Erik Petersen was doing what he does when he’s not sharing the stage with the rest of Mischief Brew, filling an entire room with his voice, a guitar and an occasional train whistle. The song I didn’t know. With shows like this, often the words are inaudible, but with Erik the words are largely the point, so most came across clearly. It was a generational account. The kind where the grandpa tells the grandson who becomes the grandpa who tells another grandson. Or at least that’s what it sounded like to me. But, I wasn’t there for most of the song.

It didn’t take much to take me away. This grandpa had lost his limbs to the railroad. The words came out, the crowd yelled along. They were all there, but suddenly I was on a sidewalk in Seattle.

He didn’t have either leg. To get around he used two standard crutches, designed to help someone with a sprained ankle get around for a week or two.

I feel guilty that I don’t remember his name. I don’t even remember if anyone knew him, or if he had just shown up. That happened all the time in that life.

We didn’t ask how it happened. We just knew, or thought we knew. The train had taken them. That was who we were. The people that passed through, if they didn’t ride trains, they spent time walking around the freight yards, chasing whistles. Trying to get close to them. It was how I’d got to Seattle.

I was there for a week, and in traditional fashion we cooked food, made alterations to torn clothes and drank. A lot.

In those days that was how I got through. I ran. I risked life and limb, and I tried to get happy by inducing it with whiskey.

I guess for our nameless friend, the story was similar, the whiskey never quite worked. Sure, it brought you elsewhere, for a time, but it always brought that elsewhere back. “You’re not a happy drunk,” a friend once said to me. She was right. The whiskey felt good, maybe only because it brought you closer to the desolation that was otherwise just below the surface.

The boy was barely in his 20s from the looks of it. We welcomed him in. Somehow we had ended up on the sidewalk just around the corner from the house where we were staying, down a hill in the central district. We sat by the street like it was just an extension of our living room, laughing and talking. Making friends. I remember him smiling. He was having a good time. There was whiskey, wine and probably more than a few Olympia tall boys.

It turned. Like it does for me. All it takes is one free moment. The mind has a split second to think, and you look down at where your legs used to be. You remember what you were able to do before. The strangers around you don’t know what happened, and you don’t want to tell them. They know the basics. You are still mad at yourself, mad at existence. Living like this was dangerous. It still is. You want to be strong, because we’re all being strong. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t choose this life. We’re smart enough to choose the easy way.

You know the way they look at you. They do their best to see you for who you are, and they succeed, until you try to stand up. You don’t want help. It’s not exactly pride, but that you must cling to some semblance of self-reliance. You’re not helpless yet. But the whiskey, even with legs, you’d stumble. The tear begins to form in your eye. Your new friends, you know they’re not repulsed, but that they can’t help but pity you just a little.

They’ve invited you back to the house, but you can’t go anymore. Now it is pride. You would like nothing more than to rest. Sleep it off, wake up around people who care about each other and may care about you in the morning. Maybe share some breakfast. Ingredients pulled from the Whole Foods dumpster. Maybe some from the food bank.

That is what we do. We take what we have and break it into enough pieces to nourish those who still have the strength to hope.

Instead he got up on the crutches. Placed them of the cracked sidewalk, and swung his torso towards downtown. I don’t remember his name. I hadn’t thought of him in years, but he still lives here, in the space where these songs play on repeat. Everybody’s there and nobody leaves.

And for him, I can’t give up.

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When I first visited my friends Margaret and Tracy on their (then) new farm in the mountains of Western Montana I was downright charmed by their life there. Margaret picked me and my dusty pack up from the greyhound station in Missoula and showed me around town a bit. She was excited. She’d just stopped working her job in town and her and Tracy were full-time farming.

It was a steep climb from town to their farm, County Rail. About an hour past some sprawling gas stations, through a reservation, we turned left across from the railroad tracks and the National Bison Range Wildlife Refuge.

Or at least that’s how I remember it.

I met Margaret in Portland. Margaret met Tracy in New York. Then I met Tracy in New York and then there we all were sharing songs and stories in the Rockies.

They started County Rail shortly after relocating to Montana. Now, a short (or long) two years later my friends have a budding business. I got the chance to talk with them last week about how it all began.

To begin, It was a lucky personal connection. They knew they wanted to farm, but didn’t yet have the land. Tracy was visiting an old friend who told her about the property. Not knowing whether the land would be available or how much it would cost, Margaret and Tracy decided to pursue this tip and contacted the landowner, Steve Dagger. It turned out to be a good gamble.

Steve’s wife, Jane Kile had been a part of the beginnings of Montana’s local agriculture movement. Jane started one of the first CSAs in Montana in 1983, Dixon Partnership Farm, when the Community Supported Agriculture model was just beginning to surface nationwide. Jane and Steve helped found The Western Montana Growers Cooperative in 2003. This initiative organized the agricultural products of the area, allowing small farms to sell directly to one source, who in turn market to restaurants, grocery stores and farm-to-school projects.

Western Montana lost Jane to cancer in January of 2010. After her passing, Steve wanted to preserve her vision of providing fresh food to the local community. He continued to use part of the property, but was looking for a farmer (or two) to continue the Pommes de Terres legacy.

The lease agreement Margaret and Tracy have with Steve is what could be called a dream scenario. The monthly rent on the property is $550. This includes: Housing, Rental of the 3 acres they have tilled, in addition to some pasture and Use of all Equipment and Structures (barn, tractors, hoses, drip tape, etc.)

In this way, Steve is much like an unofficial land trust. His profit is not tangible, but perhaps more profitable than any sum of money.

“He’s interested in the integrity of the land,” said Tracy. “He just wants people around who are going to take care of it.”

This low rent has allowed Margaret and Tracy to move forward with their farm with more ease than if they were paying a heavy land access fee. Sustainable farming is expensive without the land question.

They have to pay for seed, irrigation needs, market fees, pest control and frost protection needs among many other unseen expenses. They are also certified organic, which comes with its own price tag.

To be able to put that organic sticker on produce, farmers have to do more than just use organic practices. The application, inspection and record keeping expenses for organic certification are in the thousands. This is a huge percentage for small farms like County Rail. The farm grows food on about 3 acres.

Again, though, these farmers have a lucky break. The Montana Department of Agriculture offers an incentive program for farmers growing organically. They refund a large portion of these fees.

The pair also mentioned grants given by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). NRCS grants help farmers with infrastructure needs like season extending high tunnels, fences, or natural barriers to separate organic growers from neighboring farms that use chemicals.

Programs like this, and land stewards like Steve help small farms make it in a world that fiscally favors the “go big or go home” mentality. There’s a bit of a war going on between those who think programs like this are important and those who don’t.

These programs, embedded in legislation like the Farm Bill (the most recent which expired in the fall of 2012), are essential for small farmers like Margaret and Tracy. Without these small farms, the American public gets more and more distanced from their food source, and less and less secure in the safety of their food.

This story is a strong reminder of why transferring land from retiring farmers to new farmers is so crucial, so that our food does not get entirely turned over to big business.

Good small farms keep the land in production, pay attention to soil health, properly rotate crops, cover crop . . . so that the land will continue to produce fresh healthy food.

Farming is cumulative. That’s why it’s so important to support the soil-friendly growers that are producing food now, and also to cultivate a relationship with the next generation.

Small farms like County Rail are sprouting up everywhere. Let’s help them grow.

This is a modified version of my land access profile on County Rail Farm. You can find it here.

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When I first heard of the Agrarian Trust project, I misheard, instead hearing A Growing Trust. I liked it. In the dreams of many young farmers is a growing sense of renewing a trust in the land that helped build the agricultural beginnings of this country.

Any U.S. citizen is a part of the agricultural community, whether directly or indirectly through the purchase of food, fiber or cotton based clothing, plant-based fuels, etc. That community stands on a precipice. US Department of Agriculture studies have shown that the average age of farm operators is rising. The fastest growing group is those 65 or older, and in 2007 the average age was 58. In 1945 the average age was 39.

New movements, spearheaded by organizations like the greenhorns have encouraged young people to go back to the roots, fruits and leafy green of the American farm. They are an enthusiastic bunch of new agrarianites ready to fill the muddy boots of aging farmers. This movement is an inspiring lean away from damaging mono-crop models, and towards the security of a network of small farms. With this type of farming, consumers can feel secure knowing that their food is grown by people they know and trust, and not doused with chemicals or improperly handled.

Yet, these young would-be farmers often find themselves stalled by the lack of another kind of green.

Increasingly unaffordable agricultural land often seems to make farming seem inaccessible to those without the cash: an unacceptable outcome in a world that will need a predicted 50% more food by 2030.

Agrarian Trust seeks to change this. I will be helping them by rounding up profiles of young farmers across the country, seeing what has worked and what we need.

Last night, I had my first interview. It was easy, just a couple farmer friends living the good life in Montana. They reminded me how much I love farming, and how much farmers in general love farming.

Almost every question I asked led to a new line of exciting anecdotes, historical context and referencing. There is a lot of their story that will not go into my profile, because it does not address land access, but is still so important in understanding the needs of new agrarians.

So, I decided I’ll do a little double duty. In the coming weeks and months you’ll be able to find a farmer profile section, short stories of real farmers, excited about the land, food, and life. Here, I’ll include what can’t go into the official version, because the focus there is specific.

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I remember this headline from the satirical publication The Onion: Drugs Win Drug War, it read.

It isn’t the only faux headline they’ve come up with that has a certain ring of truth. Essentially, truth is what makes satire work. It uses hyperbole to exaggerate the absurdity of real-life news and events. Take “fake news” giant Jon Stewart. It’s not that the Daily Show makes up news, it just makes it look ridiculous by highlighting the hypocritical and sometimes downright crazy opinions of people in real news.

The Onion does make up stories on the regular, but this drug headline from January of 1998 rings a bit more true than we’d like. In fact, it’s really, really not funny.

I had the chance to attend a screening ofThe House I Live In this week. The documentary was released last year and continues to screen across the country. It’s also now available On Demand. It’s a kind of educational onslaught about the failures of America’s War on Drugs, piloted by Richard Nixon, and even goes back to drug policy in the time of Lincoln.

The facts are staggering. The mandatory minimum sentencing laws that went into effect in the 80s have contributed to a prison population that is 1/4 occupied by non-violent drug offenders. With over 2,000,000 Americans incarcerated in total, that’s quite a bit.

It’s also quite a monetary cost to the community. In Vermont it costs over $50,000 to keep one prisoner incarcerated per year. It costs $5,000 a year to provide the same individual with a drug rehabilitation program outside of prison.

As an extreme, but not unique example, the film showed the case of an Iowa man who was caught with 3 ounces of methamphetamine. He said that amount would easily fit in a small envelope. As a result of mandatory minimum sentencing, he will never see another day of freedom. He’s serving life without parole. Unless the law changes.

The House I Live In also highlights the lack of viable alternatives for some living in poverty that drive them to the desperate choice to sell or use drugs. Many are blue-collar workers or veterans out of a job who turn to drugs as a way to heal their pain.

What this film does, is show eloquently how no one is winning the drug war. Even law enforcement and judicial figures offer up concern and questions about what has gone so wrong.

It’s also something of a call to arms, an idea familiar to anyone who follows this blog closely. It encourages again and again: the only change that can come about is through the people. Through individual citizens identifying problems and making the choice to come together to fix it. No matter what your views, the documentary is worth a watch. Education at all levels of our community is of paramount importance.

Teaching kids not only to stay away from drugs, but also to show them what else there is for those who see no other way to make a living. Educating adults that the question of drug use is not so black and white. Every drug user is a person, just like any other, who perhaps has made bad choices, but deserves a chance.

I understand that the study of macroeconomics is intricately and infinitely complicated. I understand that there are quite a few things that go into the energy produced and used in the United States. However, it seems to me that the way that the energy trade plays out is mind boggling.

I’m just going to lay it out as it seems. Forgive me if you are an economist.

UK energy company Centrica reached a deal today with the United States’ Cheniere that promises the shipment of 89 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas (LNG) annually over the course of a 20 year contract. Enough to heat about 1.8 million British homes a year.

This gas will be extracted from the underbelly of the continental U.S. through the controversial method of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

So . . . this is the plan. Use a method that has shown to be detrimental to the environment to export LNG.

Meanwhile, although LNG imports are at the lowest level since 1998 in the U.S., we’re still importing over 3000 billion cubic feet annually, mostly by pipeline from Canada and Mexico.

Here’s the question. Why destroy the environment, make drinking water toxic, destroy farmland, etc. to export a product we’re just going to need to import. How is that in the interest of the American people? If we’re going to be so destructive, could it at least provide some sort of direct benefit for the people? Yes, I know business isn’t in the interest of the people. But this is the very point.

How did this happen? What is the benefit and what is the cost, and why are we standing by saying, that’s just what the world’s turned into.

I guess the message is that we are not all standing by. Everyday thousands, millions, billions of people across the world say no. They’re out there shutting down headquarters of crooked businesses, stopping their friends from bullying the new kid, cutting peanut butter sandwiches into heart shapes.

Convincing the rest of the world that there is still hope is the hard part. Putting a stop to a culture so detached from its humanity that we allow lives to be destroyed regularly, is an uphill battle. There are people out there right now on the front lines of this war. You can see them everywhere. (Mr.) Fred Rogers is quoted as once saying, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

Look for the helpers. They’re everywhere. There is as much hope that the world can change as there is fear that it will destroy itself. It’s time for your choice. Which side will you choose?